She could clear the rush of boys in her mind as much as she wanted but she'd never give this up; this shit was better than TV.
Coach Maito was right about one thing, this year had a cracker football team.
Suddenly, Ino needed to know how long she'd have this sort of entertainment.
"When is the J-team gonna be done with the J-Department?" Ino asked Hinata over her shoulder.
"They've been working on this for a couple of years now," Hinata reminded Ino. "Slowly though, since there wasn't much of a budget back then, but Sakura said they have pretty cool funds right now. She said she'd see to getting it done in a week or so."
Knowing Sakura, that's exactly what she'd do. This year Kakashi was going to run the Journalism department, but anyone with brains knew Sakura would completely be looking over the J-team and would totally kill it. Kakashi probably wouldn't even need to show up every day.
Boy, was he going to fucking love that.
So Ino had a week of looking at hot guys running around the field shirtless.
Well. She'd make the most of it.
—* * *—
Ino sensed it about fifteen minutes later when she was lounging on her back on the bleachers, her eyes closed, a book lying open on her face, happily content with all the boy-watching she'd done.
She sensed it about a couple of seconds before Hinata gasped somewhere next to her.
She sensed it moments before she heard Coach Maito blow his whistle and yell, "Alright, kids. Fall in line and start with laps."
She rose, pulling the book away from her face and her eyes flew to the field.
She froze.
Oh, Lord have mercy.
They stood in a line at the edge of the field. It was the football team in the flesh, plus a few freshmen prospects. She saw Shikamaru, Naruto, Sasuke, Kiba, Hinata's cousin Neji, Temari's hot brother Gaara and a few other faces she recognized and a few she did not.
But that's not why she froze.
She froze because most of them were shirtless and boy, not only had they kept in shape, but they'd improved in shape.
Shikamaru stood at the front, shirt-off, olive-toned chest bared, hands busy handling his T-shirt. That's when Ino remembered another thing she forgot she loved about Shikamaru. In what was now the past, she'd been intimately acquainted with his chest (and other parts of his anatomy, of course). And she liked it a lot (as well as those other parts of his anatomy, of course).
But right now she wanted to rip through it with her fingernails (and not in a good way).
Ugh.
She felt like leaving a snide remark for him somewhere, so she turned to Hinata who was sitting next to her. The wind had done a number on her dark blue, almost past-the-shoulders hair and as always, it looked good, even if Ino usually preferred longer hair (the last time she'd gotten a haircut except for the occasional trimming was the last time Sakura had gotten a haircut and that was back in seventh grade when both of them had landed a fucking insane dare to do so, which was outrageous—however back then pride was more important than her hair, except now she understood her hair was her pride).
"Who're you gawking at?" She wondered out loud and Hinata faced her and gave her big eyes in response and turned back to the field.
She needn't say more.
Ino turned back to the field too, but this time she did it searching for a noisy blond.
She found Naruto at the water cooler, nabbing a cold Gatorade, tan and shirtless, smiling wide at Neji for whatever reason he smiled wide like an idiot for.
And she gave him points for being hot. He may act like an idiot (that is, smiling at everyone and everything and being annoyingly loud not to mention loudly annoying) but she could understand why Hinata was keen on him.
He was hot. In that I'm-going-to-grow-up-to-be-a-pro-ball-player-so-check-out-my-muscles-and-lean-body sort of way.
But then again, he was Naruto, so Ino was hardly imagining their wedding and naming their kids like Hinata was probably doing next to her.
At that point, Ino decided to keep that to herself.
Her attention was diverted to Sasuke, who had been standing with Shikamaru and Neji probably catching up to the state of their play, and was now departing to the edge of the field to where many discarded shirts lay. His arms crossed downwards as his hands reached for the hem of his tee.
Ino leaned forward in her seat in anticipation.
He whipped it off, balled it up, threw it down and jogged back into the field where he fell in line behind Gaara who was already making laps.
"Oh my God," Ino breathed as she tore her eyes off Sasuke's super-hot, tall, muscled yet lean body.
"I know," Hinata whispered.
"Oh my God," Ino felt it necessary to repeat.
"I know," Hinata whispered again.
Ino fell silent, thinking to herself.
This was bad. Really bad.
Because the football team of hotshot, kickass football players had morphed into the football team of drool-worthy, super-hot guys.
And again, she thought to herself, this was bad.
There were higher powers at work here, she knew. Because it couldn't simply be a coincidence that the football team had decided to unveil their hotness the exact day she went on a boy-boycott.
No, no, no.
This was definitely the work of forces working against her.
Or maybe working with her (depending on the way you look at it and Ino was choosing to look at it negatively right now) by helping her with the boycott so she could concentrate on her life and not her Friday night, Saturday night and sometimes even Sunday night (so that her Monday didn't suck as bad) hookups.
She sighed and her shoulders slumped in defeat.
She'd done harder things before. She could do it.
Her back straightened as she thought, hell, she would do it.
She would overcome these rather large obstacles and get her life straight. Also, she'd find her dream man, however long that took.
In that order.
The rest came later.
Feeling empowered with her decision, she cocked her head to the side as she watched Kiba and Neji, both gorgeous and shirtless, join in after Sasuke in the laps.
She was empowered. That said, she was a female.
So she wouldn't quit watching.
The day went well-enough.
Sakura was in the musty attic of her house, staring in dismay at the mess she'd gathered over the years.
It'd only been a few minutes ago that she'd been in room while her music was playing softly in the background when she felt the sudden urge to go to the attic.
And right now, she was severely distressed.
She'd always loved her room.
Her room was relatively clean. It wasn't always that way. She realized when she was twelve, she had way too much stuff. Always did. It was a habit of hers; keeping everything she didn't need instead of throwing it away. It was usually meaningless things, things like her first Barbie, the first flower Ino gave her (still pressed in between the pages of an old book along with all the other thousand flowers she'd given her simply because her best friend really liked the floral kingdom, seriously, that flower-whore), a retro-looking pen she'd received from the counselor at her first summer camp and the like.
And because of the fact that she'd been living all seventeen years of her life gregariously, there was a lot of memories. And therefore, a lot of things. So she couldn't possibly keep it all in her room.
Which was where the attic came in.
Sakura looked around again at the cardboard boxes and guessed there were probably thirty of them.
All of her shit was awesome.
All of her shit, she was thinking, had to go.
Not the flowers or any pictures, of course. But everything else, she badly wanted to drop.
The idea of starting it all over excited her immensely.
It wasn't something she'd thought about before. She'd just come home from school nearly fifteen minutes ago, saw the note on the fridge that said her parents were out but would be home soon, approached her room and collapsed on the bed with a nagging, almost urgent feeling that she couldn't comprehend.
She'd had the ever-growing boxes since she was eleven and the Harunos moved from a relatively peaceful neighborhood to Cherry Street, a more established part of town. What was even better was that the Hyuugas already lived five houses down and Ino and her dad had even moved in at the end of the street.
She'd been in the same place for six years, owning thirty-something boxes of crap. Six freaking years, holding onto things when she should've let go and made room for new things, new memories.
And out of nowhere, it hit her like lightning that it wasn't her anymore.
She needed to shed that, right now.
She needed room for more.
She quickly grabbed her phone off her desk and sent out a quick text to Ino and Hinata to meet her at Tazuna's Hardware Store and she sprung off the bed.
It was time to get hopping.
Kiba stared at Inari with unconcealed hate and kept wiping at the counter top.
That fucking kid.
Kiba worked at Tazuna's every day from morning till early evening, but now with school starting up, he had talked to Tazuna and switched his schedule to three forty-five till seven everyday after school.
He didn't need to work as much as he did. But it had become a habit now. His mother and sister began hounding him to get a job the first week into summer and he knew that fighting them was pointless. They were women and in one form or another, women usually got their way.
Especially those two.
So he'd thrown in the towel before even trying to oppose them and said he'd get a job. The truth was, he never really intended to do so. He knew, after their nagging was complete, they'd go be a bother elsewhere.
But boy, he'd been wrong.
Once, on his way to North Park to meet up with the guys, he'd seen the Help Wanted sign in the window of Tazuna's Hardware store and had a quick word inside for a job to get his annoying family off his back.
And it worked magnificently.
And now here he was, even after the summer, working. This was because he'd made the shocking discovery that actually he liked working there.
The hours were good, the pay didn't suck and he had something to keep him busy, or busier, now that school was on.
Tazuna could be harshly honest and brash and liked drinking almost as much as Tsunade did but he was a good guy who treated his employees well so Kiba couldn't complain. He liked his boss just fine.
And he liked his fellow employees too.
What he did not like was his boss's brat of a grandson who he was being forced to babysit at the moment.
About ten minutes ago, Tazuna had to run out, babbling some nonsense about about someone messing up the marble slab order, and had stuck Kiba with the little monster. And right now, Kiba was wiping the counter Inari was dripping his ice cream cone all over, all the while not hiding the fact that he was doing it on purpose.
Jesus, that kid.
Kiba didn't like Inari and he knew Inari didn't like him either.
But it did not mean the brat could be a brat about it.
The store was fucking huge. It was being renovated to form one big departmental store and Kiba knew they could pull it off easy. There was still a lot of stuff to carry, a bunch of other things to heft and a shit-load of things to be delivered. They'd need a couple of months to get it all together. All in all, even when it would be done, they'd still have a lot of room and space in the large place. The whole transformation would be a change, but not a bad one. The place would be bigger than it already was.
Maybe because of that, they'd finally one-up Chikara, the annoying mini-mall-owner of Vell's next to them. That's how big Tazuna's would eventually become once they broke in through the wall at the back.
For now, the fact that he could be anywhere other than near this monstrosity of an eight-year-old didn't help. He had to keep watch of the kid, a kid who knew that the regular guy who did the dusting and wiping wasn't here and so he was taking advantage. And Kiba was sucking it up, which meant wiping his food from countertops.
A drip of the ice-cream, a swipe at the counter with the rag.
Another drip, another swipe.
Again and again.